YAZIDI GENOCIDE

On 16 June 2016 a United Nations human rights inquiry reported that “Genocide has occurred and is ongoing” against the Yazidi community in Iraq. “Thousands of women and girls, some as young as 9 years old, have been sold in slave markets. The Islamic State (ISIS) and its fighters hold them both in sexual slavery and in slavery,” the report says, “with Yazidi women and girls being constantly sold, gifted and willed between fighters.”

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

Our goal is to build international consensus with the genocide against the Yazidis as a starting point. Regional politics are complex and align with international interests in divergent ways. Although Russia and the United States disagree about Syria, both condemn ISIS. This means the Yazidi genocide may represent a new lens to focus in on the ISIS problem.